Tag Archives: culture

The Information Master – Louis XIV’s Knowledge Manager

    2 comments 
Estimated reading time 4–6 minutes

I recently read The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert‘s Secret State Intelligence System by Jacob Soll. It is a very readable but scholarly book that tells the story of how Colbert used the accumulation of knowledge to build a highly efficient administrative system and to promote his own political career. He seems to have been the first person to seize upon the notion of “evidence-based” politics and that knowledge, information and data collection, and scholarship could be used to serve the interests of statecraft. In this way he is an ancestor of much of the thinking that is commonplace not only in today’s political administrations but also in all organizations that value the collection and management of information. The principle sits at the heart of what we mean by the “knowledge economy”.

The grim librarian

Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83) is depicted as ruthless, determined, fierce, and serious. He was an ambitious man and saw his ability to control and organize information as a way of gaining and then keeping political influence. By first persuading the King that an informed leadership was a strong and efficient leadership, and then by being the person who best understood and knew how to use the libraries and resources he collected, Colbert rose to political prominence. However, his work eventually fell victim to the political machinations of his rivals and after his death his collection was scattered.

Using knowledge to serve the state

Before Colbert, the scholarly academic tradition in France had existed independently from the monarchy, but Colbert brought the world of scholarship into the service of the state, believing that all knowledge – even from the most unlikely of sources – had potential value. This is very much in line with modern thinking about Big Data and how that can be used in the service of corporations. Even the most unlikely of sources might contain useful insights into customer preferences or previously unseen supply chain inefficiencies, for example.

Colbert’s career was caught up with the political machinations of the time. He worked as a kind of accountant of Cardinal Mazarin, but when Mazarin’s library was ransacked by political rivals and his librarian fell out of favour, Colbert restored the library and built a unified information system based on the combination of scholarship and administrative documentation, ending the former division between academia and government bureaucracy.

Importance of metadata

Colbert also instinctively grasped the importance of good metadata, cataloguing, and an accurate network of links and cross references in order to be able to obtain relevant and comprehensive information quickly, issues that remain even more urgent than ever given the information explosions modern organizations – and indeed nations – face. This enabled him to become a better administrator than his rivals and by becoming not only the source of political expedient information but also the person who knew how to use the information resources most effectively, he was able to gain political influence and become a key minister under Louis XIV.

A personal vision

I was struck by how much his vast library, archive, and document management system was the result of his own personal vision, how it was built on the dismantling and rebuilding of work of predecessors, but also how, after his death, the system itself fell victim to political changes and was left to collapse. This pattern is repeated frequently in modern information projects. So often the work of the champion of the original system is wasted as infighting that is often not directly connected to the information project itself leads to budget cuts, staff changes, or other problems that lead to the system decaying.

Soll argues that the loss of Colbert’s system hampered political administration in France for generations. Ironically, it was Colbert’s own archives that enabled successive generations of political rivals to find the documents with which to undermine the power of the crown, showing the double-edged nature of information work. It is often the same collections that can both redeem and condemn.

Secrecy or transparency?

Another theme that ran throughout Colbert’s career, with both political and practical implications, was the tension between demands for transparent government and the desire for a secret state. Much of the distinction between public and private archives was simply a matter of who was in control of them and who had set them up, so the situation in France under the monarchy was different to the situation in England where Parliament and the Monarchy maintained entirely separate information systems. In France, an insistence on keeping government financial records secret eventually undermined trust in the economy. Throughout his career Colbert was involved in debates over which and how much government information should be made public, with different factions arguing over the issue – arguments that are especially resonant today.

On being the only girl in the room

    1 comment 
Estimated reading time 3–5 minutes

Perhaps it is because I am settling into a new culture, or perhaps it is because my new time zone has altered the nature of what I see in my Twitter feed, but there seem to have been a spate of articles lately about sexism faced by women working in technology, which makes me very sad. This was on my mind when I received from a former colleague a copy of a report we had co-authored. As I read the list of names, I was struck by how wonderful a group of guys they were, how intelligent, creative, and technically knowledgeable, and what a pleasure it had been to be the only girl in the room. Those guys were utterly supportive, thoughtful, generous of spirit, and full of interest in and encouragement of my contributions.

I am from an editorial background and I don’t really write code, but never once in that group did I experience any kind of tech snobbery. Whenever there was something that I didn’t know about, or unfamiliar acronyms or jargon, someone would provide a clear explanation, without every being patronising, appearing bored or impatient, or making any assumptions about what anyone “ought” to know. I was never made to feel I had asked a stupid question, said something foolish, or that I did not belong. At the same time, these men were always keen and interested to hear my perspectives, and to learn from my experiences. The group dynamic was one of free and open exchange of ideas and of working collaboratively to find solutions to problems. All contributions were valued and everything was considered jointly and equally authored.

I didn’t remain the only girl in the room. I was learning so much in the meetings that I invited my (now former) colleague to join us, bringing a new set of expertise and skills that were welcomed. I had not a moment of concern about inviting a younger and even less technical female colleague in to the group, because I knew she would be made welcome and would have a fantastic opportunity to learn from some brilliant minds.

Of course I have encountered much sexism in my career, but it is not necessary and it is not inevitable. I hate the thought of young women being put off technology as a career because of fears of sexism and discrimination. I know this happens a lot – it happened to me, although I found my way into tech eventually. I do not know whether there is “more” sexism in technology – a charge some of the post I have read have levelled – than there is anywhere else, but I do know that there is sexism in all industries, so you might as well ignore it as a factor and choose a career based on aspects like intellectual stimulation or good career prospects. Technology certainly offers those. I personally have encountered sexism in so-called “female friendly” industries such as publishing and teaching, and I am quite sure it is suffered by nurses, waitresses, actresses, pop singers…. Since I have been working in technology, I have often been the only girl in the room but almost always that room has been a fascinating, welcoming, and inspiring place to be.

This is not primarily written for the specific individuals nor for all the other fantastic guys in tech I have met or worked with (there are so many I can’t possibly name them all), although I hope they enjoy it. This post is intended to promote positive male role models and examples of decent male behaviour for boys and young men to follow, and as a mythbuster for anyone who thinks sexism and geekiness are somehow intrinsically linked.

It is also written for women, as a reminder that although we must speak out against sexist and otherwise toxic behaviour when we encounter it, approval and affirmation are very powerful motivators of change, so we also help by shouting about and celebrating when we find fabulous guys in tech and in life who are getting it right.

Understanding Computers and Cognition

    Start a conversation 
< 1 minute

Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design is another classic I should almost certainly have read ages ago. It gives very straigthforward explanations of why language and cognition are complex social processes and how this presents huge challenges for designers and for the whole field of AI.

I also enjoyed the wonderful predictions that by 1988 we would have “thinking computers” and advertisements from 1982 offering “programs that understand you so that you don’t have to understand them”. Technology progresses, hype remains a constant!

It is also interesting that “not having to understand” was promoted, rather than “being easy to understand”, even back then. I’ve always thought of usability about being helpful and increasing clarity, rather than about encouraging people not to think at all.

Cultural design misunderstandings

    Start a conversation 
< 1 minute

A really interesting discussion about the differences between Chinese and American website design on Live From Beijing (via 290s). I particularly liked the comment “Let’s avoid the trap of explaining things with culture instead of explicit motivations.” It’s so hard to disentangle the multiple motivations and influences on user behaviour, but financial gain does seem to have a tendency to trump everything else!

Digital Information Culture

    Start a conversation 
< 1 minute

Digital Information Culture: The Individual and Society in the Digital Age was well worth a read (the link is to a serious review). I found it a bit hard going to start with (but I’d always rather be challenged than patronised) probably because it began with a scholarly overview of concepts of culture. I enjoyed the interesting juxtapositions, such as the way the concept of text as artefact has changed since medieval times and how the idea of text as a performance is returning in the online arena. With chapters looking at the effect of the cyber revolution on notions of knowledge, authority, power, memory, and identity, it posed lots of challenging questions and highlighted some new ways of examining the cultural, political and psychological effects of the digital age.